The Christmas Quilt: Quilts of Love Series (3 page)

“How much longer does she have?”

“The doctors think a month or so, but Samuel says he’s seen cases where the cancer can take one quickly or can cause them to linger. Samuel says there’s no way to be sure.”

“
Gotte
knows best.”

“Why did you go, Annie?” Leah ran her finger around the rim of her cup. “If there’s nothing to be done . . .”

“The bishop had to attend to a matter on the other side of our district and couldn’t be back until the next morning, so we went and spent the night. It was no problem. Samuel and I took shifts. I like to go with him when I can. Once our
boppli
is born, I won’t be able to share those times with him anymore.”

“Everything changes when two become three.” Rebekah smiled at them both. “Or four.”

Leah’s concerns always seemed out of proportion when she was visiting with Rebekah. Maybe she was right. Maybe at their home, things would change for the better.

“Once you cut your fabric, you can take it with you and quilt while you’re waiting.”

“
Ya.
I meant to, but then . . .” Annie stared down at her hands. “I took a nap instead. Three times last week. I know it’s because of the
boppli,
but I feel guilty when I sleep in the middle of the day.”

“Be glad you can, Annie.” Leah rubbed her hands along her lower back. “It’s been weeks since I have slept more than a few hours at a time in the evening, and not at all in the day.”

“You girls will forget all about this as soon as you hold your newborn.” Rebekah began stacking the dishes. “Annie, I’d be happy to help you begin the quilt.”

“
Nein.
I want to do it myself. This is my gift. My work of love for Leah.”

“All right.” Rebekah nodded in agreement. “I understand.”

Leah stood, with some difficulty, and collected her package from the store. “Let’s go say hello to Charity before we leave.”

“
Gut
idea.”

“She can walk you girls back to your buggy.” Rebekah pulled Annie, then Leah, into a hug.

When she did, Leah breathed in the smell of her freshly laundered
kapp
, cinnamon from the cooking she’d been doing in the back of the shop, and a dozen other things that all cried out
mother
to her. Something deep inside of her wanted to stand there, in Rebekah’s arms, to rest and stop worrying.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, at Annie’s.” Rebekah paused, reached out to touch her face, and then added, “If you need me before then, you send Adam.”

Leah blinked and nodded. How could she have even thought of hiding anything from Rebekah Weaver? She had an instinctive way of understanding when anything was amiss among her children, and Leah was one of her children now. Though in the last months she had wondered about many things in her life—Rebekah’s love was one thing she had never questioned.

3

A
dam had completely disassembled the small gas-powered p
ortable handsaw. You wouldn’t think there could be so many pieces, but he had over twenty on the worktable in front of him. Nothing appeared broken, but there’d been enough dirt on the inside of the engine to keep it from working properly. He suspected when he put it back together, cleaned and oiled, it would run fine.

The sound of a horse and buggy pulled his attention away from the project.

Wiping his hands on his pants, he stepped out into the early afternoon sunshine.

“It’s too nice a day for a farmer to be inside the barn,” Samuel declared, unfolding himself from his buggy. At six feet tall and steadily gaining weight from Annie’s cooking, he was a big man. The weight he needed to gain. For too many years, he’d resembled a scarecrow. For too many years—after the death of his wife and child in a winter storm, his grief had kept him from enjoying life.

“
Ya.
You’re right it’s a
gut
day to be outside, but my work is in the barn. Everything in the fields is done. You’d know since you helped me harvest.”

Samuel slapped him on the back. “What engine are you taking apart today?”

“Small gasoline-powered handsaw.”

“You don’t say. Made by Ervin Hochstetler?”

“Who else?”

“Then we know it’s a
gut
product.”

“It is, but even a hand-saw made by Hochstetler has a limit to the amount of dirt it can handle. A mechanical engine is like the human body, Samuel. It has to be treated with respect—”

Samuel held up his hand. “No need to lecture me. I’ve heard you speak on this before, and I believe you.”

Seeing what Adam had laid out on his workbench, he let out a long, low whistle. “Taking it apart I could probably do, but how do you put it back together?”

“It’s not so hard. I always start at this end of the table.” Adam indicated the right side of the bench. “Top to bottom, right to left. My process never varies. They go back together in the same order they came apart.”

Together they walked the length of the bench until they came to the skeleton of the chainsaw.

“Not much left when you’re done disassembling it.”

“True. A few minutes before you arrived I’d finished cleaning all the parts. Now I’ll go back through and put them together, being sure to properly grease each part as I do.”

“You make it sound easy.”

Adam ran his fingers through his beard. “I suppose a
gut
memory helps, but then you remember your herbs and what to give for which ailment.”

“I have a few books I refer to,” Samuel admitted, perching on a sawhorse.

“I have one or two myself. If I’m stumped, Leah and I will take a ride to the town’s library.”

“Leah’s actually one of the reasons I stopped by. I wanted to see how she was doing.”

“Oh.” Adam glanced toward the house, shook his head, and then focused on the engine again. “She and Annie aren’t back from town yet.”

“Didn’t figure they would be. I saw Belinda yesterday and she updated me on Leah’s medical stats.” Samuel ran his palm over the sawhorse. “Belinda was the one who suggested I stop by and talk to you.”

“To me?” Adam’s voice squeaked like the hinge on the back kitchen door Samuel had been intending to oil. “Why talk to me? I know next to nothing about pregnant women.”

Samuel laughed. “Pregnant women, maybe, but I imagine you know plenty about Leah.”

“You might be surprised.” Adam began piecing the small engine back together. Working on the engine felt good. At least it was one thing he was confident he knew how to do. “Why would Belinda send you to talk to me?”

Though the day was cool, suddenly sweat beaded along Adam’s forehead. “Is something wrong? Is that why you’re here?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Belinda thought maybe Leah wasn’t being completely open with her. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well or she was worried about something. Belinda tried to get her to talk, but Leah clammed up tighter than a silo in a winter storm. So she asked me to come and talk with you—see if there’s anything she should be concerned about. We want this pregnancy to go as smoothly as possible. No surprises.”

Adam stopped pretending he could focus on the engine. At this rate, he’d make such a mess of things it would likely resemble an
Englisch
blender when he was done with it. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he turned and trudged toward the open door of the barn. The sunshine on his face helped. It didn’t provide any of the answers he’d been searching for, but it helped.

“Adam? Are there any surprises we should know about? It’s difficult enough to birth twins at home. If there’s anything you can tell us—”

“Surprises? Seems to me there’s been nothing but surprises since the day Leah learned she was carrying my child.” The words weren’t easy for Adam to speak. They echoed in the barn, sounding to him like a confession, but he wasn’t sure exactly what he was guilty of. If he had known, he would have gone to the bishop already. As it was, he continued to toss sleeplessly each night—usually on the couch in their small living room.

Samuel joined him in the patch of sunlight coming through the doorway of the barn. “She was sick at first. I remember that.”

“You make it sound as if she had a cold. It was so much worse, Samuel. Leah spent several hours each morning in the bathroom, clutching the toilet. I’m grateful we don’t live in a district that still insists on outhouses or my wife would have caught pneumonia, she spent so much time in there.”

“I’m sure it must have been hard—”

“I wasn’t allowed in there,” Adam continued. “For two years, nearly three, we shared everything. Suddenly, she didn’t want me near her. As if she was embarrassed.”

“Maybe she was.”

Adam reversed direction, nearly bumping into Samuel. “Why would she be embarrassed? It wasn’t her fault the babies were making her sick. We didn’t even know at that point there were two . . . two, Samuel. Do you realize how exciting it is, and how terrifying? I’m not sure I can be a
gut dat
to one, but we’ll have two at the same time.”

“Let me see if I have this straight.” Samuel walked out into the sunshine, to the pasture fence where he could see the workhorses Adam had allowed out for the afternoon. “Leah had a bad case of morning sickness, which lasted longer than most. It had barely ended when you learned she was pregnant with twins.”

“
Ya
, I suppose the timing is about right.”

“How have things been since then?”

Adam noticed that Samuel wasn’t limiting his questions to asking about Leah anymore, but he didn’t call him on it. “I don’t know. How are things supposed to be with a pregnant woman? She doesn’t sleep well, so most nights I sleep on the couch. I don’t want to wake her when I get up at the crack of dawn.”

“And her moods?”

Adam threw his hands up in the air. “About the same as a donkey you might be tempted to purchase. Not that I’m comparing my
fraa
to a donkey, though her temperament is similar.”

Samuel grinned. “Cranky is normal.”

“Oh, not always cranky. Sometimes she cries on top of the temper.”

Samuel laughed outright. “You’re giving me something to look forward to with your
schweschder
. You know that, right?”

“You’re the doc for our district—”

“I’m not a doctor, Adam.”

“Fine—herbalist. Whatever you want to call yourself, you’ve helped Belinda birth plenty of babies—you’ve birthed them yourself when she couldn’t be there. I’d think you would be used to pregnant women.”

Samuel pushed his hat more firmly on his head as a buggy pulled into Adam’s lane. “Tending to a woman who is expecting a child is one thing. Living with her is another completely.”

“That’s it? That’s the best advice you can give me?”

They moved together toward the women. “I’m not going to pretend I have the answers, Adam. Leah needs to know you love her. The
bopplin
will be born soon and you’ll have more sleepless nights ahead. Before you know it though—you’ll have your bride back.”

Adam wasn’t so sure about that, but when Leah first caught sight of him, when she raised her hand and waved and the smile he knew so well covered her face—he temporarily forgot about all the things that usually stole his sleep. For that moment, he could trust what Samuel had just told him was true.

Annie was anxious to get home and speak with Samuel. Leah had finally opened up to her a little on the ride home from town. She didn’t think her
bruder’s
wife had shared everything bothering her, but she’d shared enough. She’d liked to have stayed and fetched a rolling pin and threatened Adam with it.

Somehow, she didn’t think that was in keeping with the
Ordnung
. Too bad, because Adam was one stubborn guy—she should know from her years growing up in the same house with him. Maybe Samuel would have some ideas on how to talk some sense into him. Maybe Samuel had experienced similar feelings when his first wife, Mary, was pregnant.

Annie didn’t bring up Mary and Hannah often. She didn’t want to break open old wounds, and it would seem the death of his wife and child, though the accident had been over ten years ago, would still be a painful thing. Samuel had made it clear when they married that no topic was off-limits. She trusted him when he said it; however, she would only ask about Mary if it seemed prudent to do so. Perhaps Samuel would have some ideas about her
bruder
without having to broach how he had reacted to his first wife’s pregnancy.

So far, he’d been perfectly patient with her.

But then, she’d had none of the complications Leah had endured.

Yet.

Thankfully, they had nothing scheduled for the afternoon except a simple meal for dinner. They had done the cleaning for tomorrow’s luncheon the day before. She might also have time to work on the quilt. She was happy with her pattern. If she could gather the correct templates, maybe she could begin on her sample square.

Pulling into the lane to their home, Samuel’s buggy tagging along behind hers, she was surprised to see a buggy waiting near their front porch.

She didn’t recognize the buggy at first, but as she drew closer, she did recognize the couple—

Jesse and Mattie Lapp. They lived on the outer edge of their district. An older couple, in their sixties, they seldom came to town for anything other than the twice-monthly church meeting.

Annie didn’t bother driving her buggy to the barn. She pulled up beside them, barely taking time to wind Beni’s reins around the front porch railing. Fortunately, her mare was well trained and content to be home.

The Lapp’s mare, however, seemed agitated. Annie took a moment to pat the neck of the animal and murmur a word of peace to her. Mr. Lapp was still in the front seat of the buggy, though it was plain he had not been driving. Mattie had been. Now she was hovering over her husband, whispering to him. She didn’t so much as glance up as Annie approached their buggy.

“Jesse. Mattie. Is everything all right?”

Samuel was beside her by the time she’d reached the door and peeked inside. Annie could tell immediately that something was terribly wrong. Jesse lay back against the buggy seat. His breathing was shallow and his skin clammy and pale.

“I’ll fetch my bag,” Samuel whispered. “Don’t attempt to move him.”

“How long have you been here, Mattie?”

“Maybe thirty minutes. We didn’t know where else to go. Jesse was having the pains again, so we waited for them to pass. When they didn’t . . .” Her hands came out and fluttered around as if she had no control over them. Though she was talking to Annie, her eyes never left her husband’s face. She seemed afraid to glance away, afraid to take her eyes off him even for a second. “I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to get in the buggy, but I didn’t know what to do. I made him get in. Practically had to drag him. Was that the right thing to do, Annie? He won’t talk.”

“You’re talking enough for both of us, woman.”

Mattie was Annie’s height and still worked hard around her farm each day. She had added weight through the years, but her arms were strong. Annie had no trouble picturing her hitching up the wagon and driving it to their porch steps, before dragging Jesse up into it. How long would that have taken?

Annie allowed a small smile. “It seems he hears us fine.”

She angled around Mattie. “Jesse, I want you to lie down across the buggy seat. Can you do that for me?”

The fact that he didn’t argue with her was a worry. What Amish man would lie down in the front of his buggy without protesting? If she had been compiling a chart, she would have written that Jesse’s appearance was similar to most men in their sixties who had the potential for heart problems. Though thin men certainly had heart problems, it seemed to Annie that often there was a particular shape, whether
Englisch
or plain. Jesse had it—the pear-shaped stomach and barrel chest. It was a stereotype, but as one professor had taught her, “medical stereotypes exist because they are often true.”